Roland

Was going to pit them photos up around here ... But scared the neighbours Witless ...

Yep ... A good mate, and pigeon Fancier, Herbie Webb, had a Polecat bigger than his Jack Russell. Had to be seen to be believed. But if that boot aside of it in the last photo is any thing to go by it is but of an average size I think.

Just wondering A. if the polecat was caught or photographed? Also why was the topic took of?

Three times as big ... Up a tree ... sure it wasnae a Pine Martin

Well that is /was good. Didn't see it ... so maybe was right to stick it up again lol. Have you signed it Showman

Let's hope that they can sway the general thoughts and beliefs. Can awaken people to the truth. We need as many as we can to read and act on this. Thanks for reading ... next step is voting or adding a name etc. Thanks for reading and doing something. https://www.change.org/p/pigeon-fanciers-we-need-you-to-help-change-the-law-to-protect-our-pigeons?recruiter=268976331&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=share_email_responsive

I'd wager you will keep at least 4 or 5 no sweat. Great if you could release them from the aviary and a tad hungry. To settle - or break a bird - they need to feel safe and have a bolt hole to clamour back in. A open hole, or a open door.

personally I'd allow them to rear a nest. Gives them a better binding with their home. Then you will have at least a pair of youngsters more reared via two - in case you lose them. Their are come back races you can start them off with. Mind, like all, I remember only too well the hitching to get started lol. Good luck whatever you decide.

My mistake then Andy, it is rumoured to be Ed Central South rd..

I hear tale that the Edinburgh South Pigeon club has folded. Is this true? I thought this was a strong club... I once had some birds from a couple of their' members.

I hear tale that yet another club has folded. This being Edinburgh South pigeon club. I wonder how true that is ... seems a sign of the times only too often now. Then one hears that STILL clubs refuse new members, or take other clubs / members birds as trainers etc. Yet they plead poverty. Like when we ask 'names' to donate birds for club / Fed raiser and members don't even bother to attend. Not even to have a drink and socialise, which would please the venue too! Then would be donators are called if they refuse to donate a 'Worthy Cause' spouting it wouldn't hurt them etc. Likewise it would hurt members to turn up and support, even if not interested in buying, or not able to donate. Yet the same folks bend over backwards to support other good causes eh!

Further to thoughts ... Is the magnetic field relevant? Marathon of the Skies implies pigeons can hear the sea constantly where ever they are Others that each region has a different smell.... etc. etc. Swallows etc. photograph the Sky each night. Well one thing is certain regards the Swifts, swallows and Martins etc. is that if moved, even a couple of hundred yards away, they get lost. Others 'Sun Spots' etc. Contrive to get our birds lost. Have a very good article regards the 'Sun Spots' and homing.... Think it is just a load of phish personally, but then a good read... Will sort it out and post it up. Then we could go on and debate the wonders of the the Monarch Butterfly. A good read of very many. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarch_butterfly

Exactly philg50. You can certainly use it to spray the drinkers / feeders etc. However when one considers the amount of fanciers that use Bleach - never mind Milton - in the water one would wonder. It certainly gives them a great complexion and silky feathers etc. As a Doctor said ... 'The guts would be lily white'.

I use this now. Must be top rated and used in Hospital's ETC. http://www.aspli.com/products/1728/actichlor-plus-disinfectant-tablets-150-x-1.7g

Interestingly, in my earlier post I mentioned the importance of Immunity. Of allowing it to work etc. and build up etc. In my post 'Maps and Compass' actually strengthens this in saying 'The cells that researchers thought were there are actually of a completely different kind. "They are immune cells called macrophages, and not neurons that communicate with the brain," says David Keays, a neuroscientist at the Institute of Molecular Pathology, in Vienna, and lead author of the new paper. Isn't it the case that we destroy some much with willy - nilly treating and further we weaken their very immunity by nor giving their immune system a chance to work and strengthen. Indeed to build it up and gain a all important strong constitution!

By Josh Fischman - The Chronicle The swallows will still come back to Capistrano, albatrosses will wing their way across vast oceans, and homing pigeons will still arrive at home. But scientists are no longer sure how they do it. If indeed they ever have been. Conjecture at most. Until last week, some thought they had a pretty good idea. Birds had both a magnetic compass and a map that they followed over impossibly long distances. But research published in the latest issue of Nature shows that map-sensing cells that were supposedly built into a bird's beak don't really exist. The cells that researchers thought were there are actually of a completely different kind. "They are immune cells called macrophages, and not neurons that communicate with the brain," says David Keays, a neuroscientist at the Institute of Molecular Pathology, in Vienna, and lead author of the new paper. "They can't detect magnetic fields." "I think this knocks the field back 10 to 15 years," says Henrik Mouritsen, a professor of biology at the University of Oldenburg, in Germany, who studies bird navigation. "That's a good thing. Usually negative results like this don't get published by prominent journals. But the original paper claiming these beak cells existed was cited at least 100 times, so this is a very important correction." Another critic has charged that a separate journal has been sitting on a different debunking paper for four years, neither accepting nor rejecting it, which he says caused many researchers to waste their time. One of the original beak-sensor researchers has launched a spirited attack on the new work-"The great amount of data conceal the bad quality of the contents," says Gerta Fleissner, a neurobiologist at the Goethe University of Frankfurt-but the critics appear to be carrying the day. "Birds have magnetic sensors, but these beak cells aren't part of the picture," says Joseph Kirschvink, a professor of geobiology at the California Institute of Technology. Two types of magnetic senses have been found in many animals, from bacteria to sea turtles. Essentially the creatures use a compass and a map to get around. The compass is formed within cells by tiny grains of a mineral called magnetite that reacts, like compass needles, to the north-south direction of earth's magnetic field. "In bacteria, they really are sensitive, like beautiful little needles," says Mr. Kirschvink, who helped discover them some 30 years ago. Behavioral experiments with turtles show they will turn to follow artificial magnetic fields, and turn again as those fields are reversed. Pigeons have shown similar behaviour. "It's not the compass that I'm calling into question. It's the map," says Mr. Keays. Biologists have assumed some map sense must exist, because a compass isn't good enough for finding your way. An animal travelling long distances also needs to know where it is. Magnetism can help here, too. For example, an iron-filled mountain would register as a landmark if a bird could detect magnetic intensity as well as direction. In two papers, one published in 2003 and another in 2007, Ms. Fleissner and several colleagues suggested they had identified the intensity detector. It was a series of neurons in six locations in a bird's upper beak, they said. The ends of these nerve cells contained particles of magnetite and maghemite, minerals that could react as a magnetic field got stronger or weaker, and transmit that information along nerve fibers to the brain. Mr. Keays says he was interested in these pathways, and wanted to quickly identify the six sensor locations so he and his team could move on to investigate how the information was interpreted by the brain. "I chose to work with pigeons because they have this incredible homing ability, and I honestly thought the work would go very quickly," he says. "But we couldn't find these six cell areas." Instead, in about 190 birds, they found a whole bunch of cells with various iron-related minerals in them. And that didn't make sense, he says, because the abundance would drown out any specific magnetic signal. "Then we got lucky," Mr. Keays says. "One of our pigeons had a beak infection. And looking around it we saw lots of little blue cells." He had used a blue stain, which binds to iron, to identify cells that contain the metal. "That made us wonder if all of these cells were actually immune-system cells." After slicing pigeon beaks into 250,000 very thin sections to examine them under a powerful transmission electron microscope, he decided they were immune cells called macrophages, which engulf invaders like bacteria. "We could actually see their little tentacles as they surrounded foreign bodies," he says. Macrophages often have iron in them because they recycle it from red blood cells. What they don't have, and what the researchers didn't see, was a nucleus. Neurons do. For Mr. Mouritsen, that was the smoking gun. "No nucleus means no neuron," he says. Even one of Ms. Fleissner's co-authors on her original paper is won over. "It is exquisitely and convincingly shown that the cells in question are nothing but macrophages," writes Michael Winklhofer, a biomagnetism expert in the University of Munich's department of earth and environmental sciences, in an e-mail. (He had previously expressed doubts that the minerals originally found were magnetically sensitive.) "Normally the best fanciers come to auctions and the best pigeons are on sale so I enjoy coming to them." Ms. Fleissner is not impressed. She responds that Mr. Keays's methods were poor, and he simply missed the cells that she saw. The sections he sliced were too big, she says, and could have missed the tiny neuron segments. And those areas should contain some neuron terminals, even if they don't contain magnetic sensing grains, but they don't show up in Mr. Keays's slides, leading her to question the quality of his cell preparation. "Not seen does not mean not existing!!" she writes in an e-mail. But Mr. Kirschvink has long had another objection to her work. Iron particles need to be highly ordered crystals to respond to earth's magnetic field, and Ms. Fleissner originally described crystals that were oddly shaped and amorphous. "That renders them useless as magnetic detectors," he says. Mr. Winklhofer agreed with him and in 2008, the two submitted a paper about this problem to the same journal that published Ms. Fleissner's 2007 work, Naturwissenschaften. And then: nothing. "We kept contacting them, asking them to accept it or reject it, but we could never get an answer over four years," Mr. Kirschvink says. "The last time we asked was two weeks ago. For a journal to hold onto a paper that long is really unethical." If the journal had published his paper, or let him submit it elsewhere by rejecting it, he thinks researchers like Mr. Keays could have saved themselves a lot of time. Other researchers have pointed to different cells, in fish, near their noses, that are stronger candidates for magnetic mappers-they have the right crystal structure-and he thinks Mr. Keays could have been hunting for those. The journal editor has a different view. Sven Thatje, a senior lecturer in marine evolutionary ecology at the University of Southampton, in England, wrote in an e-mail that he had not heard from Mr. Kirschvink or Mr. Winklhofer in three years, until they reached out to him a few weeks ago because they knew about Mr. Keays's upcoming Nature paper. "If there had been a matter of personal urgency, who would ever wait this long?" he wrote. "Pressuring an editor 2-3 weeks in advance of a competitive publication is odd and also a little academic." He also said that Mr. Kirschvink's paper fell into a gap as the journal switched editors, and that he had assumed the previous editor had dealt with it. The person whose time was supposedly wasted isn't complaining. "What I like about this paper is that it shows science is self-correcting," Mr. Keays says. "Someone, somewhere, will step up and set you right." Now, he says, "we are trying to find the real thing, the real magnetic sense organ. After all, birds must do this somehow."

But of course that is the same regardless of any Bacteria killer. A good constitution and a natural immune system has to be best. Their system then, like ours attacks and destroys and KEEPS a template as to how and what is needed again .... How ever sometimes one may well need the advice of a vet and give them help ... but seldom is and when a ....

Ian, I wanted some too. Needed to fetch spring water 3 miles away. - It turned out unkempt and putrid - But I went to a local brewery. A small concern not a corporate kind, and was given 3. Hence used them to store the diesel in... very handy as prices rose. Actually went back last month for 3 more... I cut these in half long ways for pigeon baths. I mix up the feed in buckets now... 2 days at a time etc.

Have to say it looks the part. Bears great merit and I would have no hesitation to buy such a piece if of local, or English. Can't see - for a moment - that the Scots would / will allow that to happen, and rightly so. Good luck to the new 'Proud' owner.

I thought I had it lol. Suppose I could - if they have caught up yet lol, look on their webb site. Race Programme 2015 Sorry wrong Midland lol. Date Race Point RPRA Code 23/05/2015 Carentan 5092 13/06/2015 Fougeres 5064 04/07/2015 Ancenis 5106 25/07/2015 Bordeaux 5007 25/07/2015 Vire 5087 29/08/2015 Portland 4088 12/09/2015 Carentan 5092

Rough is better Tammy. Safer and better from the supermarkets. Hulled rice mixed twice a week with normal feed all the time is great.

Yep ... especially before the long races etc. Found it was beneficial - JMO Personally - to soak it over night. Basket mornings I would add a little lemon juice and they went / go with crops well full.

Sea side like Brighton lol. Think I would just google 'Best price grave' personally. Will be free delivery of course.

Agree Geordie ... But one has also to admire his ability etc. As a Human being he may well be lacking some what, as a sportsman too maybe. Yet in his craft he is top notch. Along with Andre Ward a class above at the moment of any in their divisions.

Well he has - Pac Man- given £millions to the poor and needy. Is a Politian etc. Mind I think he will make a lot of money as a guitarist and singer yet. Good to see him get a good earner. But think this one he will lose and have a couple of easier ones to win and retire as a winner ... But to me, and many more he is and always will be a winner ... age catches up, and fighting so long way above his weight must have taken it's toll ... Why? More money I guess.